Creation : 19 January 2002, at Strasbourg, La Laiterie
Duration : 6′
Publishing : Lemoine
“Incipit sings the collective work written for and with Les Percussions de Strasbourg. I found the idea of this exquisite corpse perfectly original, each composer writing one after the other and taking over the legacy of his or her predecessor(s). Being the first on the list, it is up to me to pave the way, to find a few leads, to create a precondition for what our future agreements would become. As its title indicates, Incipit is meant to be the beginning of a piece on fallow land, the end of which I have no control over. The dictionary says the following: “Incipit, third person singular of the Latin verb meaning to begin, formerly used to announce the title of a reading or copy; it has been preserved in French as a noun for the first words of a literary text or the first notes of a musical text”. The six musicians begin with a simple tuning fork. They set the tone: a barely veiled questioning of the future of a few musical figures who are groping around, waiting for the inevitable blossoming…”. Michaël Jarrell